Two Strings
by thoroughlymodernJulie
Summary: Married nearly fifteen years, Georg and Maria von Trapp find themselves on holiday on Chincoteague Island at the end of a warm summer, moments of heated passion intertwined seamlessly with contented retrospect. They pass time simply to be what they had once been one autumn in Paris, having left one dream far behind for a future that was better than they ever imagined was possible.
1. Kiss Me Once, Then Once More

The afternoon was quiet and humid, with the windows and doors propped open, allowing a salt-scented breeze to gust into the sitting room at random intervals. If one were to step outside the confines of the four walls and look beyond the horizon, the dark threat of a thunderstorm could be seen in the sky and slowly descending on the beachfront bungalow. The crash of the waves upon the strand complimented the sounds of silence: wind rustling curtains, and the gentle rhythm of a man and a woman breathing, content.

Georg von Trapp, dressed in a light, cotton shirt and loose-fitting pants sat on the slightly-overstuffed loveseat, eyes closed as his fingers ran lazily through his wife's short, reddish-blond locks, pulling her fringe from her sticky forehead and pushing the sides behind her ears at varied intervals. For her part, Maria von Trapp was sprawled across the loveseat with her head in her husband's lap, a book propped against her belly as she read the well-worn volume, dressed in what could simply be described as a silk shift, and if she were to sit up, it would surely be stuck to her skin.

The book was a delight, a rarity, a near-impossible find in America post-war: Brigitta had found it in a bookstore in the town where she was attending university. It was book of sonnets Austrian in origin; Brigitta had seen it and immediately thought of her father, she being one of the few in the world who was privy to the knowledge that the stoic naval captain harboured a place in his heart for poetry. It had been handed off to her mother, however, and much to the delight of daughter and amusement of husband, Maria found she enjoyed the earnest musings of Rilke.

"Do you suppose one might find Apollo's temple?" Maria murmured, thumbing a slightly-dampened page to turn it.

Opening his eyes, Georg smiled and looked down at his wife, whose face was not so affected by the humidity as was the rest of her body, but was blissfully bare, and her delightful smattering of freckles across cheeks, nose, and forehead were clearly on display, brought out now in full force by the hours upon hours of sunlight the pair had soaked in since arriving on Chincoteague Island.

"One day," Georg said, "when our brood is lessened and not in need of constant supervision"—here, Maria snorted—"I shall take you to Greece, love."

"Hmm," Maria intoned, eyes on the words on the page. "I appreciate that, aside from the fact that it is not likely to be possible to leave the continent without at least two children in tow for years yet."

"We managed this trip," Georg said, twirling a finger around a lock of Maria's hair.

"Yes, but only with some unbelievably exhausting coordination," Maria responded, a note of rue in her voice. "And besides, you haven't answered my question, not really."

"Rumor has it that the temple of Apollo is there, somewhere, hidden in Parnassus. Whether it is where the current structure stands is something else altogether."

"It would be wonderful to see," Maria commented, shifting slightly, but inhibited from movement by the fact that her husband had come to lay his left arm across her torso, which was now conveniently propping up her book for her.

Silence fell again as Maria continued to read, and Georg eventually turned his gaze from the worn book and the face of his remarkably youthful wife—the harsh years had been incredibly kind to her!—and let his mind wander, perusing over dreams once had, dreams lost, dreams born anew, wondering how it was they had come to be here. What mercies had given them such a life?

In a little while, the sun would begin to sink lower in the sky; the temperature would drop, and Maria would eventually pull herself from the poetry etched in their native tongue, by an Austrian, and she would wrinkle her nose at the thought of having to put on a dress, but she would do it, and they would go to dinner, walking along the beach with feet in the water, sandals in hand, until they reached a tiny little beachside hut that served light fare comprised of the ocean catch of the day; sometimes fish, sometimes lobster, always something filling that would hold them over until breakfast the next day, whereby Maria would prepare something large for them both in midmorning to tide them through the day.

They would walk for hours in the sun, take the ferry to Assateague Island, wander among the coves, talking and laughing or saying nothing at all. And then, as the sun was on the edge of the horizon, if you were in the right place at the right time, you could turn and hear, as well as the waves crashing along the beach, the tell-tale pounding of hoof beats. The Chincoteague ponies would be making their sojourn across the island's terrain, in search of a cove to shelter in for the night.

Georg had always held equines in his heart; he had ridden them since he could stand on his own two feet and was a master horseman. His wife, a consummate rider herself, however, forsook all pretense of refined skill and merely seemed to simply glow and her eyes would sparkle when in the presence of a horse. Watching her ride, it was not a question of who held the power but of who was more in harmony with whom. Married to her for thirteen years, working around horses constantly, Georg still was unsure whether that sparkle was simply for the magic of the beast, or for the mischief his wife could conjure up where any of these fickle, majestic creatures were concerned. A day astride a horse left her in spirits unimaginable, rivaled only by a day atop the Untersberg.

They had come here on the recommendation of some friends back home in Stowe. Georg had known from the expression on Maria's face as Andrew Gilbert explained how the herds of Chincoteague ponies roamed Assateague Island freely in its isolated pockets that this would be one of their rare excursions away from Vermont. With five children still in the house and the youngest just four years old, leaving for long intervals was still something of a pipe dream, but Liesl's husband, a friend of Andrew Gilbert's and sharing in the love of the wild ponies, had put it to the eldest von Trapp daughter that they take on her youngest siblings to allow his in-laws what he considered a rare, novel treat indeed.

The couple had presented the offer together, but it had been less of an offer and more of a command; Marta and Gretl for their parts were delighted to stay with their eldest sister for the remaining portion of their summer holiday, and Rosemary, Johannes, and Eleanore were simply thrilled at the prospect of sleeping on cots or trundles with Liesl's four children, who were more their kin and less their nieces and nephews. It had been agreed by the parents that the seven children could spend the good weather camping in the garden, or otherwise crowd into the sunroom that had been added the year before to the modest house.

"Oh," Maria breathed, "this is lovely." She had gripped the book firmly in her hands and was mouthing the words of a sonnet to herself.

"Indulge me," Georg murmured.

"I'm inclined to think it would lead to us to up-to-no-good," Maria said mildly, "but as you wish."

Her blasé comment made Georg smile. Resting his head against the back of the loveseat, he closed his eyes and waited for his wife to speak again, but this time, in the silken words of a poet, and not the lyrical lilt of delight and mischief that seemed to engulf her when she gave in to such simple pleasures.

" _Exultation knows, and fierce Desire acknowledges,_

" _Only Lamentation must still learn; with a maiden's hand_

" _She counts out the old sorrows through the night._

" _But suddenly, slantwise and unpractised,_

" _She holds aloft a constellation of our voices_

" _Against the heavens, left unobscured by her breath."_

Maria continued to read aloud until she finished the sonnet; when she did so, Georg felt himself gripped with something that he could only call admiration. Admiration for the beauty of the poet's words, admiration for Maria's willingness to share her small joys, admiration that such a wretched world could hold such treasures.

Maria, it seemed, was not preoccupied with the pretense of conversation, and good as her word, shared what she had remarked upon because he requested it, and then carried on silently. It was so nice, so peaceful… and rather a bit too solemn.

Bending down to reach around his wife, Georg quickly grasped her in a binding hug, one which sent her book tumbling to the floor, and buried his face in the nape of her neck, to find the scent of sea, of spice and floral notes there, and he kissed her.

Giving a cry of alarm and indignation, Maria had turned to grasp the fallen book, to save it from impact on the hard, plank wood floor, but her husband's grasp around her middle prevented her from falling, or even having a hope of rescuing the delicate volume. She turned her head to glare at him, trying valiantly not to laugh and giggle at the tickle of his breath against her neck, but before she could say a word, push him away, or retaliate, she found herself locked in gales of laughter. Just as quickly as he had kissed her, he had begun to tickle her abdomen, which only became more exposed as she kicked and twisted around, trying to free herself.

Managing through some Herculean feat to writhe free from the loose shift she wore, Maria jumped away quickly, on her feet quick and nimble as a sprite, before Georg could register that all which was left in his hands was the veritable scrap of cloth.

Looking down at his hands, Georg chuckled, glancing with an impish smile up at Maria, who was standing several feet's length away from him, stance defensive, bare chest heaving as she tried to quell the last vestiges of laughter from her face, to be replaced by annoyance. The attempt was an admirable one, but Georg could see the twinkle of amusement in her wide, blue eyes.

Dashing a hand across her perspiring forehead, fringe damp with sweat and now pushed away from her eyes, Maria squinted at the man in front of her and asked, "What on earth was that for?"

For his part, Georg shrugged. "I don't know. Seemed the thing to do."

Not convinced, Maria nodded skeptically. "Uh-huh," she tutted. "The thing to do. Right."

The fact that she was standing before him topless, with only a scant lace piece of fabric clinging to her hips to take the claim of "underthings" with the outside world free to gust and blow in around them did not seem to be her chief concern. Or any concern at all, really. Georg felt a rush of pride swell up in him at this; it was not that his wife had no shred of dignity—oh, no. On the beach, she refused to meander in anything less than a dress, and her one swimsuit was elegant, stylish, and modern, but highly conservative, and she typically tied a sarong at her hips to shield her legs from lingering stares.

"It makes my skin crawl," she shuddered once in explanation. "It always has."

She hadn't elaborated further, and in truth, this qualm suited Georg just fine; though his wife possessed many fine features, her legs he found to be most attractive, and he enjoyed toying with her long, lean, muscular limbs knowing that, among various other aspects of her body, her legs were an intimacy for him only. This didn't preclude her ability to dress herself well, fitted and sharp and able to play up her figure, but Georg recognized that, indeed, the power was in the choice.

Looking up at her, Georg leaned his arms on his knees and spread his hands. "You're always a surprise, you know that, don't you?"

Eyebrows knitting, Maria placed a hand at her hip and shook her head. "Incorrigible," she stated.

"I couldn't have planned this," Georg laughed, gesturing at her defiant stance, gaze lingering on her chest. Her breathing had calmed now, and she gave a slight huff.

Standing, Georg stepped toward her, shaking his head, smile curling at the corner of his lip.

Shaking her head, Maria laughed lightly and held out her hands, grasping his in hers and joining in an embrace, leaning in as his strong arms surrounded her and rubbed her back firmly, finding all the tense spots that time and experience had taught him he would encounter there, and she pressed a kiss to the bare patch of his chest before dropping her hands to the hem of his shirt and beginning to tug it upwards.

Releasing his grasp and stepping back slightly to oblige his wife, Georg let her pull the light garment from his body, and grinned at her satisfaction, which was etched over a proud face as she reached for his belt and unbuckled it, pushing his loose pants away from his hips with a shrug. "Fair is fair," she drawled lightly.

And so there they stood, just feet apart in underthings, man and wife, he stepping from the pants and tossing them to the loveseat, she advancing to kiss him.

He had expected it, known it would come, this kiss. But the electric jolt that coursed through him when her bare chest met his, her hands cupped his face, and she gasped against his mouth—so close to lovemaking, yet so far away—almost made him collapse, and he staggered backwards to the loveseat, pulling her with him, she never once breaking the kiss, and collapsed on top of it as she straddled his lap and peppered his neck, shoulders, and ears with kisses and gentle bites in a rare but tantalizing burst of aggression.

Her heart rate had spiked again, her chest was rising and falling quickly, though this time not from annoyance, and looking down at the man she so loved as he found his bearings and began to knead her breasts, Maria could feel the beginnings of his arousal beneath her. Could feel the beginnings of her own. This holiday thus far had given way to far more intimate moments than they were privy to in their day-to-day life, and Maria felt somewhat as though she were on honeymoon again.

But this was better than honeymoon, because now, oh, now… now was wonderful beyond words. Paris had been special, new, an education of itself, but now, so many years on… they knew each other, moments like these carried equal possibility to be acted upon or reined in, and the choice to do so was made in full comfort that whatever lie in store would be worth the abandon or restraint, and in full comfort with themselves and each other.

He had implored her so often in those early weeks to have patience, to not rush, to go slow, to trust him, to breathe deep. Some attempts at compliance had gone more poorly than others, but she had tried, truly.

"Take such care," he had whispered in her ear one night, "move so deliberately, with such awareness"—he was circling her, pressing kisses to her collarbone, thumbing open the buttons along her back with deliberate, painstaking slowness, tracing fingers along the curve of her neck, nipping at her shoulder—"that if I were to tie a piece of twine around each of our ankles and knot them together in the middle, the length would not snap."

"Which ankles?" Maria had attempted to parry back, but it had been lost in a gasp as the man circling her like a hungry lion had freed the clasp at the base of her spine that held her evening gown at her waist and felt the garment, being quite top-heavy, fall away from her body and pool to the floor.

It hadn't mattered, not really. The missive had worked, enough to give her a point of focus that meant they were moving in tandem more often than not.

"It's rather unlike those romance novels Liesl loves so much," Maria had commented one morning, tousled and slightly dazed following one such successful attempt at lovemaking according to her husband's theory of two strings. She had sat up in bed so saying, one hand buried in her hair as she looked up at her husband, who had climbed from the tangle of their bed and was tying the sash of his dressing gown lazily about his hips, hair equally frightful, a supremely pleased expression on his face as he pivoted away to throw open the French windows.

"Thank God for that," he had answered, kissing her on the forehead as he rejoined her. "Much too silly, much too _urgent_ for my liking. The urgency is in the anticipation. The patience—the reward."

"Yes, and, well," Maria added, "the thoughts and actions might be silly and her mind better edified by other things, but at the very least—they are no instruction manual, these books!"

No words written on the page of any book could possibly bring to bear what it was to be loved by this man. He was a creature made of love, made for love, servant and master both.

Jolted back to Chincoteague Island as warm, strong hands grasped her hips and thumbs kneaded into the base of her spine, Maria raised herself on her knees and bent down to kiss Georg again. Their bodies, invigorated by desire and at once compressed by the humidity, were no longer lightly sheened with sticky dampness, but instead had become slick.

In a thick, heavy voice, Maria rasped, "Carry me."


	2. Nice and Easy Does It

"It's not the book, Maria, it's all on you," Georg shouted to his wife, who had made a comment to the effect of "I told you so," and then scampered away from his grasp, laughing and kicking up sand as she ran, breathing in deeply of the sea air and full to brimming with infectious cheerfulness.

It was no use, Georg realized as he watched his wife twirl in circles along the water's edge, head thrown back as the sun glinted off the curve of her throat. He laughed, lengthening his stride to catch up to her. It didn't matter; they had had their fun and he was no sorrier for it than she. Another time, she might have argued stubbornly with him just for the sake of arguing, but there was no arguing, not in this place, at this time. The only reason it had come up at all, this book of Rilke's sonnets, was because Maria had tucked it into a deep pocket of her skirts and brought it along with them on their midday trek to Assateague Island. They had packed a picnic basket which was left behind in the car, intending to stay until nightfall to explore.

"I want to finish them, the sonnets!" she exclaimed when her husband heard the dull thud of its weight against her thigh as she walked toward him and looked up at her questioningly, his hands busy securing the picnicking supplies in the rumble seat. She had come out of the bungalow fresh from a shower and had a checkered blanket in her arms. "Tie this blanket down over everything," she directed, "or else it'll all go flying when you speed down toward the interstate."

Grumbling, Georg took the blanket from his wife, and said, "Not a word about your wayward musings to Brigitta! I don't think she could survive the shock of knowing something so sterile and innocent as a book of Austrian sonnets could inspire such devilish, wonderful afternoons."

Maria, who had been glaring at her husband with a hand on her hip, smiled at the finish to this missive, which was met with the same from her husband. "You know me, the very picture of discretion," she said, pretending to lock her lips with a key and pocket it.

"Trouble, you are," Georg chuckled, standing up and stepping aside to let his wife inspect the picnic supplies, now securely in place and tucked in tight under the blanket.

"I'm not the one that insisted on packing a bottle of champagne with the picnic things," Maria said archly, nodding in approval at the cargo, stepping into the passenger seat and closing the door with a thud.

"I thought you locked your lips," Georg teased, walking around to the front of the car.

"Well, I kept the key, you see," she answered cheekily. "One does that, you know." She patted her pocket with a prim nod, and pulled out the small volume of sonnets, beginning to read where her husband had so unceremoniously torn her away earlier in the day, and pursed her lips.

They pulled away from the bungalow in a flurry of dust and skidding stones, Georg laughing heartily as he shifted gears and increased speed, taking them toward an afternoon of beachfront wanderings and a quiet evening among the coves.

They were here now, and Georg could feel his stomach beginning to rumble from hunger. Speeding to a light jog to catch up to Maria, he came up behind her and grabbed her by the waist, causing her to unleash a flurry of giggles as he wrapped his arms around her and spun her in a circle.

"Georg!" Maria cried as her toes brushed sand, then air, then sand, then water.

Bracing himself to stand her upright, Georg simply planted his hands firmly on Maria's hips and nuzzled her nose. This close, he could see that the ocean spray had misted her face, he could count her many freckles, he could kiss her once for every long, dark eyelash.

"You are my world, my lover, my best friend," he said. "You see life with so much joy, you can't help but pull me along with you."

Overwhelmed, Maria looked down at their feet, which were bare and dug deep in the wet, warm sand. The water was sloshing slowly around their ankles at uneven intervals, washing sun-warmed froth over their feet. "I'm nothing special, not really."

Studying his wife's downturned face, Georg took her chin in one hand and lifted it so that she was looking into his eyes. When she tried to look away, he turned his head to follow her gaze and shook his head. "You are to me."

And that was how they had come to be kissing so passionately for the second time in one day, and Maria was pleased to say later that the wine and the book most certainly had _nothing_ to do with it, and her husband would chortle at her unwitting concession of defeat on that score.

Breaking the kiss after some moments, Maria breathed deep and looked up with heavily-lidded eyes at her husband, who was gazing at her with something she could only describe as pure adoration, and she felt her stomach flip. This man, this man that she fought so passionately with, shouted at, fumed about, went to bed with, danced with, bore children for, made love to, woke up beside every morning… he was hers, and it really could be so simple as these small moments, right now, right here, nearly fifteen years on.

The way she had always heard long marriages spoken of, especially in Georg's circles, it had sounded such a trial, such a misery. But they were happy, and these first years had passed with hardly a backward glance, in the blink of an eye. Every day was a different challenge, but Maria had come to realize that it was so much of what kept things fresh, new, exciting. And that the investment in knowing each other as well as they did was the foundation on which stability and predictability built its stronghold, the constant among myriad change.

That was not to say that life had not been difficult. Fleeing Austria, moving to America, those events alone had been enough a trial to last a lifetime. There had been illness, weariness, entire blankets of uncertainty. Her first two pregnancies had been difficult; the timing had been less than convenient, to say the least, and she had been ill throughout. To the relief of all, her most recent pregnancy—and, she hoped, her last—had been the complete antithesis, and though the news had initially given her pause, Georg had been quick to point out that her slow realization of it had been precisely _because_ she hadn't been dreadfully unwell, and just as he predicted, things had gone in a fashion much more to Maria's liking. It had been easier to enjoy life in that year leading up to Eleanore's birth, and Maria had found herself to be a much less harrowed new mother, less for her experience and more for a stable environment and general good health.

Maria had often joked in half-jest that Georg would not be content until he had a full dozen for a brood of children, but they had both agreed as they watched their youngest daughter grow through her first year and blossom into the precocious little girl she was, complete with a fiery head of red hair which her siblings lacked, that she was the keystone in the family archway, and that any future additions would come in the form of grandchildren only. It was a position that Maria's doctor agreed with, and so with that, a chapter was closed.

At nearly thirty-six years old, Maria found this suited her just fine. Her children shaped her world, had revealed to her strength she had never known she was capable of, but they had also shown her what her weaknesses were, as a mother, as a wife, and particularly where her health was concerned. Her health was such that, in truth, she should not even sit astride a horse as often as she did, but her husband had known better than to wrest that pleasure from her, instead settling for decreased high antics, no recreational jumping, and supervised bareback routines. But should it ever come to be that she needed a kidney removed, her riding days would be finished and she would be rather limited in her physical interactions with their children.

"Please, let's do all we can to avoid that," Maria had begged her husband, near tears.

Georg had looked up from his feet where he was sitting in the hard hospital chair a few feet diagonal from the bed his wife lay in, hooked to an intravenous drip and receiving periodic antibiotic treatments throughout the past forty-eight hours. Her fever had broken and her body was finally fighting off the infection in her kidneys of its own accord. The doctor overseeing her that night had just left, having delivered the grim recommendation, along with a long list of things she could not do in normal health, and an appendix ever longer due to her newly-discovered pregnancy.

He sighed, and nodded.

The next time the presiding doctor came to check her vitals, Maria had fixed him with a steely gaze and had inquired as to the health of the baby in her belly, asked frankly if she could safely carry any children following, and had found herself dissatisfied with the vague reply and determined if she was to be bedridden away from home, that more satisfactory answers be reached.

"The concern is more for the additional strain on your kidneys due to the pregnancy," the doctor had said. "We will know more over time if it is one or both kidneys that are stressed, but while you are still mending from this infection, and expecting, it is not a wise thing to pursue in-depth answers."

She had been frustrated by this, and the problem had compounded itself when, barely six months past Rosemary's birth, Maria had fallen pregnant once again. Maria had come to him to tell him of a third missed cycle and, instead of feeling glad, Georg had felt as though he had been socked in the gut, and overwhelmed by the déjà vu of having stood on the brink of disaster, with another woman he had loved with everything he had. The improvements Maria had made since giving birth, at best, could be said to have stalled.

A daily course of antibiotics had been resumed as soon as the pregnancy was confirmed, and when Maria found herself being lectured about the risk of back-to-back pregnancies as it pertained to her and given options she didn't feel were useful in her current state, she had wearily hoisted the six-month-old infant she toted with her and commented drily, "It's a bit late for that, I think."

"He's right," Georg had agreed as they talked later that night, huddled together under the covers of their bed. "Perhaps you should consider it… the hysterectomy."

Feeling her stomach clench, Maria shook her head. "There are other possibilities, safer, less drastic," she murmured. "If, after this child is born, things are substantially worse, then I will consider it. I may have to, then. But as of this moment, I would very much like to keep as much of my anatomy intact as possible."

The trajectory of her pregnancy with Johannes had not been smooth or infection-free, but it had gone better than with Rosemary if only for knowledge alone, and combined with the total exhaustion of parenting two children under the age of two and introducing a contraceptive device into the marriage bed, the gap widened and the worry lessened, and she had been in a clean bill of health for several years by the time it was determined that she was carrying a third child. Tests just six months prior to conceiving had shown her kidneys to be functioning at a healthy capacity, and it had been stipulated that with proper caution, diet, and fluid intake, she could possibly carry a baby to term without needing to take another course of antibiotics for the duration—antibiotics which kept her marginally healthy, but which also wreaked havoc on her appetite, exacerbated nausea, and were not a sure guarantee against recurrent infections.

All three of her babies had been born early and small. Happily, they all had more than made up for this in the following years, but the stress of it had brought both parents to a place of contentment concerning the state of their family, and Maria had stated baldly that she rather enjoyed the freedom of intimacy without the open potential to conceive that lifted a burden from her shoulders that she hadn't known was there at all until they had intentionally abandoned contraception for several months just to see where the cards might fall, a fate that gave them their youngest.

"I wonder," Maria mused over dinner the night she shared her suspicions that she was carrying their tenth child, "considering that it took mere months to conceive now versus the nearly-four years it took to conceive Rosemary with nothing to hinder it, if the problem had been there all along."

"But Johannes," Georg reminded.

Maria shrugged. "Look at Friedrich and Louisa, Kurt and Brigitta, Marta and Gretl." She smiled softly. "Not so uncommon. Simply, luckily, unproblematic."

His wife was healthy, now, yes, years later, with a successful pregnancy behind her and no apparent desire for another, but there were still moments when Georg would reach out to touch her, fully aware of her strength but also of the quiet, lurking fragility, and it made him want to hold her fast and never let her go, to cherish her and consume her and surround her and make sure she could never come to harm.

But the true joy was in watching her run and dance and laugh and sing, in observing her as she slid from slatted fence to equine withers, in seeing her involvement as a mother to her children never waver, free and unreserved. She wasn't the sort to sit on the sidelines sipping a lemonade and observing play; no, she was wrapped right into the brawl and always had been. Georg still chuckled to himself when he thought of that fateful summer day where she, ill-advised, had stood to her feet in the rowboat and toppled over backwards into the lake behind the von Trapp villa, in a world and a lifetime that was now so very far away. If she had just remained seated, the boat might not have toppled at all, but that had never been her way.

What she set her mind to, she pursued with everything she had. There were no half-measures where this woman was concerned, and so here they were.

"Look, Georg," Maria whispered.

Glancing up from his point of focus, the fulcrum of his oar, Georg was startled to find that the canoe they sat in was drifting off-course. Yanking the oar back, he pulled it close to him, not having realized that his wife had ceased her paddling and was instead still, pointing to something beyond the water.

They had paddled themselves to the vicinity of some coves, and the sky was becoming a slow symphony of pinks and oranges and reds. Glancing backward at her husband, Maria realized as the vessel jerked that he hadn't been paying due attention and drove her paddle quickly and decisively straight down in the water, the depth indicated by the slightest scraping of the paddle against bedrock. The boat lurched, and Georg quickly followed suit on the opposite side, bringing the vessel to a stop. The noise caused by these actions alerted him to what his wife had found: he heard the anxious neighs of ponies, and of hooves moving together in tandem, a soft, rhythmic pounding against grass, turf, and sand.

They sat together in raptured silence, watching as the herd of ponies broke out in different directions, some dancing at the water's edge, some wading in, others huddling together in the tall grass. They were beautiful, mid-sized, varied in color, sporting the unruly, bushy manes and tales typical of a pony, with attitude and personality to match. Maria laughed as she spotted a pair of foals running circles around their mother, engaged in play. She pointed, delighted when they nipped at each other's hindquarters and turned on each other with alarming speed, to begin the chase again in the reverse direction.

Eyes crinkling at the free-spiritedness of the antics, Georg turned his head slightly, just enough to watch Maria from the corner of his eye while still taking in the herd ahead of them. The way she had leaned forward, her body tensed, he could feel her longing to reach out to touch them radiating in waves. But she wouldn't, he knew, and it was just as well. The tourists here who touched the ponies knowing nothing of the temperament and habit of the beasts had set both their teeth on edge time and again; lazy meandering among people did not mean there was an absence of wildness in these animals—and just as any horse, the slightest thing could turn their moods and spook them, only here it was not just one or two or three little ponies, but hordes of them that moved in packs.

"Let's turn around," Maria said after the herd eventually grouped itself off to graze, and the foals lay down in the grass to sleep under the shelter of their mothers. "Let's return to Chincoteague with enough time to wander through the island, walk along the docks, something mindless and a touch romantic."

"Nice and easy does it," Georg reminded his wife as she began to paddle at a pace that would tire her quickly and was setting the canoe askew. "We've a ways to go back, and I'm not as young as I once was."

Tossing a glance and a snort over her shoulder as she adjusted her speed, Maria opined, "To look at you, one wouldn't know it."

"Ah, well… I _feel_ it," Georg said, groaning for dramatic effect.

"You are full of nonsense," Maria said, rolling her eyes. "And don't try to blame it on the wine!"


	3. By the Light of the Silvery Moon

At the light tap of a hand on her shoulder, Maria looked up with a smile from her seat at the end of the dock on the ocean front near their favourite eatery. Her husband had returned from fetching tall glasses of water garnished with lemon, and with a murmur of thanks, she reached up to take hers.

Slipping his sandals from his feet, Georg pushed them aside to join the heap that was their checkered picnic blanket and Maria's own leather sandals, taking care to lower himself beside her and not slosh the cold water all over himself. The last vestiges of sunset had begun to fade in a deep purple, which met the atmosphere above them with the beginnings of inky blackness and the twinkling of the night's first stars. Her feet were dangling off the pier, partly submerged in the water beneath them.

It was quiet, save for the chirrup of crickets, the rustle of wind, and the slow, warm crooning of a Tony Bennet love song that reached their ears from the open window of the seaside hut's kitchen, where the proprietor and cook, Ted, could be heard warbling faintly along in what could be described as a respectable bathroom tenor.

"Look," Georg said, pointing above their heads. "A shooting star."

Setting her glass beside her, Maria leaned against her husband and said, "Rosemary told me a long time ago that one should wish on a shooting star."

Perplexed, Georg asked, "Why? They're nothing more than cosmic debris."

"I think it's one of those American superstitions, maybe from one of those Disney pictures that came out during the war," Maria mused, gaze directed upon the heavens. "Like bad luck for seven years for breaking a mirror. But I like it. It's romantic."

"Do you wish? Upon shooting stars?" Georg asked, wrapping an arm around Maria.

"Sometimes," she said. Slipping her hand into his, she squeezed it. "A wish, and a prayer." With her other hand, she pulled a beautiful shell from her pocket and held it up. "My first wish on a star, Georg, was that we could always be as happy as we were in that moment, at that time. I remember, when she said it to me, she was tiny, barely four years old, and it was the first time since carrying her that I had felt well and stayed well, and we were settled and just returned from visiting our friends on Cape Cod. She must have heard it then, among Andrew Gilbert's children."

"What has been the outcome?" Georg asked, always fascinated to hear these quiet musings that his wife only rarely divulged to him.

"The outcome," Maria sighed, "has been that nothing in life is certain, nor does simple mean easy, but on the whole, everything is much better than I ever could have imagined."

"We have been blessed," Georg agreed, pulling her tighter. "Do you remember your second wish?"

Maria thought for a moment, trying to place the next time she had looked up at the night sky and spotted a star streaking across the heavens with an intentional thought. "I think," she said slowly, "it was the night we made the decision that eventually gave us Eleanore. We had gone on a long walk, to discuss it, remember?"

He did. The thought had been running around in loose fragments on the edge of conversation for a while, and eventually, they had decided it was simply best to step away from home and take the thoughts to neutral ground, ruminate over the issue at hand, and ponder whether the choice was one worth making.

"What is the one thing that gives you pause above all else?" Georg had asked his wife, whose face was etched with indecision. They had sat down along the embankment of a creek several miles deep in the woods behind their home. Maria had lodged herself between the trunk of a tree and a large slab of rock, and looked remarkably at home in so doing, sitting there with an ease that Georg both admired and envied. He loved nature, but the only place he ever felt as right as his wife looked was miles from any land, in the middle of an ocean, or in the depths of the sea.

"I'm comfortable," came the slow reply.

Brow furrowed, Georg replied, "I don't follow."

"I mean," Maria said, "that I'm comfortable with where we are, and also comfortable with the possibility of the risks carrying another child, and I feel I need to pick one or the other or otherwise resign myself living with the regret of having made no decision at all. I'm neutral, so to say, and it's vastly unsettling. It sounds rather silly to admit it, but it keeps me awake at night."

If there was ever a moment where Georg was more sure he was evenly matched to his wife on the grounds of leading a principled life, this one was it—the ability to relate to this frame of mind was familiar, instantaneous, remarkably clear. How many times in the decades of his seasoned life had he faced similar ideas and been rankled and annoyed by them?

"I understand," Georg replied.

"Do you?" his wife asked.

He nodded. "In my capacity as a naval captain and loyal countryman, I have stood where you stand."

Maria nodded, drew her knees to her chest, locked her arms around them, and looked away.

After several minutes' silence, Georg spoke: "The answer is simple, Maria, if you let it be."

"Remove the foil," she said, quiet and still.

"The choice is yours, love," Georg swallowed, "though I would be remiss if I didn't say plainly that I'd rather have a healthy wife and nine children than the alternative, if the infections return as a result of another pregnancy and cause greater damage."

Looking across the creek, Maria breathed out slowly. "The potential for risk is, of course, there. All the doctors and specialists I have seen seem to think the problem is by now long resolved, but there is no certain way to know what will happen." Relaxing her grip and lowering her knees, Maria rolled her shoulders. "Perhaps it is time. Perhaps I have come to rely on the contraception too much for its convenience and less for its role in keeping my body healthy."

Coming from a woman whose faith was paramount above all, the heaviness of this statement was all but a thundering blow, and Georg raised his head to look up at her in her spot between tree and stone, and felt his eyes widen.

She gave a rueful smile when she turned her head and noticed his gaze on her. "I know my own faults, Georg. And we have talked in imprecise circles for months now, but now I'd like to know: do you _want_ another baby?"

"What I know," Georg said, picking up a twig and snapping it between his fingers, "is that any child of mine has enriched my life and brought me happiness and purpose to precipices previously not surpassed, for all that I have lived, and that having a living testimony and legacy in the form of our children remind me what love is, what it looks like, and what it can accomplish when I run the danger of forgetting—which, as you know, I have certainly done."

"Yes," Maria said softly, pondering. "I would like, at the least, the _possibility_ to experience a halfway normal pregnancy, birth, and early newborn days, apart from being so dreadfully ill. I know I might not get it, but… that is what I want. I haven't finished, not quite yet."

"It seems we have our answer," Georg said.

"It seems we have," she agreed.

"It was when we finally made it to the edge of the woods on our way back to the house and were about to break into the clearing," Maria said, her voice warm and steady in the present. "I had grabbed onto your arm, stumbled over something—my own feet, probably—and in catching myself, looked up and saw the star shoot across the sky. Rosemary's voice echoed in my head, and in the brief moment where my eyes closed as I righted myself and tried to regain my stride, I wished for what felt all too impossible, but still more worth attempting than abandoning."

"Six months, we decided," Georg said quietly, "six months, and it was barely two before it happened."

"It was, I think," Maria admitted, "the most terrified I'd ever felt in my life, when I realized it, even though I wanted it. And then you pointed out my continued good health, and the unease slowly began to vanish. With each passing week without trouble, I breathed a little easier."

"So did I," Georg echoed.

Maria sat up a little and turned her head to gaze at her husband. "You never said a word!"

"I didn't want to distress you," Georg said. "And I was very careful, then, to be honest in my response to your queries, but to not push you one way or another. I envision a long life for us, and should your kidneys start to fail, I'd rather it be from age and not from carrying one child too many."

"Dr. Richey told me they performed the first successful transplant just last year," Maria mused. "At a hospital in Illinois. I could have that done now, if I needed to."

"I'd give you one of mine," her husband said.

"Oh, you darling man," Maria whispered, reaching out to stroke her husband's face. "He said it's a ghastly operation. I wouldn't want that for you."

"After all you've done for me, I'd endure the worst torture just to have another hour with you. I was too selfish to understand that when I was young, but I understand it now. Time is _precious_ , Maria, so precious, and I paid a high price to learn it."

"I know," she soothed, kissing his temple.

After sitting in solemn silence for a while, Maria had grasped the sweating glass of water sitting beside her and plucked the lemon slice from the bottom, popping it in her mouth to suck on it. It was as cold as the ice it had been sitting upon, and with a puckered face, sucked the juice in. This made her husband laugh, and in turn she laughed with him.

"We must be a sight, right here, right now," Georg chuckled, bundling Maria into his arms, maneuvering so that she was seated between his legs. She swung her own, still hanging over the pier, kicking up a splash of water, and giggled as he buried his face in her neck and began to tickle her with his breath and tease with his tongue.

"Your skin is salty," he whispered, "and smells of sun."

A shiver ran through Maria, a shiver totally out of place for the warmth of that humid August evening on Chincoteague Island, but so very synchronous for the rush warm desire that flooded her body and made her shudder.

Strong, firm hands ran from her neck to her shoulders, down the length of her arms, stopped to rest on her hips, and with a low sound of approval, she leaned her head back against Georg's shoulder, and breathed a happy sigh. "I don't suppose I hear Ted's radio anymore," she said. "We should return his glasses and go home."

Slipping a hand in the pocket of his wife's skirt, Georg grasped the small book still tucked there, opened it, and thumbed through its pages by the light of the moon. Without ceremony, he began to recite Rilke's sonnet from memory, the very one on the page he had found, and Maria relaxed fully and heavily against him, ears filled with only the sounds of an island summer night, and of her husband's deep, steady voice reciting words of deepest longing to her, in their native tongue.

Listening ears surely would not know the words for their precise meaning, but the feeling could most certainly not be mistaken. That was, perhaps, the great irony and great blessing of life. Words could take any form, but feeling and passion and thought came from a place beyond that, and were perhaps the most transparent of anything on this mortal plane. It was why, through ages, lovers were never shunned from the world but welcomed into a niche that nourished and sustained them, either until passion burned away or love was left behind in its purest, most refined form, tested and true.

It suited them both, it suited them both with alarming ease, and it made them so easy together, free to move, to dance, to laugh, to row, to _be_.

Making love was rarely a thing done today one for the other, but together for the good of _them_ , a lesson learned through the years that strife and circumstance had taught them. It had perhaps been learned best in the frame of conceiving Eleanore; in taking the chance, the couplings had been of the highest order of _intent_ , and they were perhaps their most fluid and clear-minded about the notion that they were a unit with the possibility of creating a being that would disrupt that easy unity for a while.

It was a time that had made many things clear, they both acknowledged, looking back now.

"What do you want?" was murmured more often these days not as a way to drive the pleasure surely, but to fit it within a puzzle that adhered to what they were together.

Though the years had faded many things to a wistful haze about that glorious time in Paris, Maria found that she recalled almost perfectly the nature of her husband's focused, determined, practically militaristic pursuit of her pleasure, of their consummation, of his iron-clad control of himself, and of the delight she had discovered spark in herself when she eventually uncovered ways to break that control; things, she understood later, that he would protest at not for lack of enjoyment, but for knowing that he would find himself in another realm completely, one he was not confident in.

"You told me so many times to trust you, those weeks in Paris," Maria had whispered in his ear, her voice warm and thick, "and I did, even when I assumed that my monthly bleeding meant _de facto_ abstention and you had ideas otherwise."

Her hands were resting on his shoulders as she stood behind him where he sat in a chair in the bathroom, ostensibly to have his wife trim his hair; she had done this, and had done it well. But she had just finished and the scissors had been set down, and she had reached for the pile of her silk things that hanged on the back of the bathroom door in their suite, and she had pulled an ocean-blue scarf from the hook underneath her favourite dressing gown.

Watching this, Georg had tried to get up, but she had come and pushed him firmly back down, and in so doing, the towel around his waist had loosened and fallen from his hips, and she had smiled, placing a hand squarely on his chest, the hair there soft and still-damp from the shower he had finished some ten minutes before.

"You see," Maria said, her voice silken honey, "I've sent the children away for the day, to play with their schoolmates. They left while you showered, and now it's just us."

She had then circled back around and inspected her handiwork, and Georg had turned his head to watch her in the mirror, wondering at this creature. She was not a quiet, passive participant save for instances that seldom came, but occasionally this different woman emerged that settled a feeling in his gut that made Georg instantly sure that he was about to be toyed with, cat and mouse, in a game that would challenge and exhaust him and raise his respect for Maria ever higher.

"I think I've grown rather good at this," she said, brushing her fingers along Georg's neck, an action that at any other time might be construed as completely innocent, but now it sent shivers down his spine and stirred desire in his groin.

He looked up to meet her gaze in the mirror, and found that her touch was, true as her word, intentional, and her gaze was smouldering, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips. She held up the sash and slowly tied it over his eyes and, bent in his ear again and whispered, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," he rasped, and allowed her to lead him to their bedroom like a helpless child.

"You are driven so mightily by what you see," Maria said plainly, "but I want to take that away for today, and see what it might be that you only feel. You can't watch me, can't anticipate me—not completely—and you can't steer the proceedings. If, after I am through, you have abided by this, then perhaps you may have your sight back, and your way with me."

She surrounded him, all of her: her scent, her touch, her drive, her body melded together with his. The results had been earthshattering, and Georg had needed several hours to process just what he had learned in that single encounter alone with his wife, naked and completely at her mercy, sightless and having agreed in compliance to abide by her contract.

Maria had seemed to anticipate this, and had gone about her tasks in the house and through the day with rather a jaunty spring in her step, a sway to her hips that seemed to him a constant invitation, and a gleam in her eye that spelled triumph.

She had never once belittled him for his need to be in control, though she had often grouched about it, imploring him to loosen the reins just a little. He had obliged to listen, but hadn't really understood how to grasp what the supplication could do for _him_. His way had always suited him just fine, and with the goal of pleasuring the woman before him his object, he felt he had no space nor need to change. His wife would practically purr her satisfaction when he asked if something was lacking following such requests, and so he would rest assured in the knowledge and carry on.

Only now, he had learned, she had found the way to help him understand, and understand he did: it was not about what it would do for him to meld to this qualm she held to, or even for her—it was about what it would, could, and indeed _did_ accomplish for _them_.

It was a turning point Georg had never once envisioned reaching, one he had never thought he needed to arrive at, but it had changed the very essence of what it was to engage in intimacy with his wife, with Maria, and the only word he could come up with to describe what such a turn meant to him was _grateful_. There was something to be said, of course, for not altering what was not in need of it in the first place, but there was something else to be said for new perspectives.

They said, too, that man is not capable of change, not truly. But Maria, Maria had changed him. By standing by him, by loving him, by letting him love her, by being everything he had never known he needed.

"Georg," Maria murmured as he finished a sonnet and made to turn to another page, his fifth or sixth—he had lost count now—"let's go to bed, now. I want to be wrapped in your arms the way these words wrap themselves in my mind, in my heart."

Her voice was still thick with desire, and her meaning clear for the innocence of her actual choice of words. Georg nodded, closed the book, and slipped it back in her pocket, hand lingering against her thigh for a moment as he kissed the hollow of her neck in acquiescence and then pulled away from her to stand. Maria grasped their glasses in hand and clambered to her feet, taking his outstretched hand and linking it with hers with a smile, a smile of secrets and love and affection.

"What do you have a taste for tomorrow?" she asked after they had left their glasses with Ted with a wave and smile, who was washing dishes and preparing to close up shop for the night, gathered their things, and headed for the car.

Looking around them, over his shoulder, Georg smiled and leaned to whisper in Maria's ear, "I want to taste your dreams of us."

They stood just beyond light that was cast by the seaside restaurant, the silvery moon illuminating what the soft yellow could not reach, and with a tilt of her chin, Georg could just see that Maria's eyes were dilated almost to the point of inky blackness. "My," she breathed, feeling something lurch deep in her belly. "Such _confidence_ , Captain!"

"That is the key, after all," he said, leading her along, back to the car. "You are, however, quite reliable, my love."

"Don't make it sound so easy," Maria teased, climbing into the passenger's seat, "I could go to bed prim and proper as you please and not dream a thing!"

"No," Georg said, shutting his door and starting the engine, "you'll sleep naked, tangled up with me, as you've done all but our first night here, and in the morning, I shall endeavour to seek my reward with your good morning kiss."

With brazen purpose, Maria said plainly, "In that case, don't let me fall asleep without brushing my teeth tonight!"

"You needn't fresh breath for this kiss," Georg answered.

"No," she replied, "I was thinking rather of what would follow."

"Oh," he said, looking over at her. She stared back, face quite serious. And then, at once, together, they laughed. He put a hand to the back of her head and pulled her in to kiss her forehead, savouring the action before letting her sit back and entwining his fingers with hers as he steered the vehicle one-handed toward the road that would lead to their little bungalow in this small paradise.


	4. After the Rain

Clutching light cotton sheets to her naked chest, spooned against her husband in the early morning, Maria closed her eyes in unadulterated bliss as the cool breeze of a storm blew fully in her face, ruffling her hair, tickling her nose, and causing gooseflesh to rise on the skin that was exposed.

"I am so pleased it's finally rained," she said. "It's nice to want to have cover again, after so many hot nights."

Indeed, the air had been thick enough to cut with a knife, and now, with the storm almost passed, the humidity had dissipated, and the air was light and fresh. The wet earth was sharp in Georg's nostrils, but it only hit him if he turned and raised his head just a bit beyond Maria's own. Otherwise, he was preoccupied with the luscious, musky scent of them, having collected on his promise just a while before, as the dawn broke through. The storm had come in a crashing instant, just after Maria had gasped in climax and was regaining her breath and her sense, and in the minutes and moments to follow, she had found her wits and, true to her word, mirrored his good morning kisses with some of her own, and everything else it led to, just as she suggested it might.

"You say I'm reliable," she had laughed, dragging a hand lazily through the hair on his chest before leaning over him to kiss him fiercely, "but you, Captain, you are just as bad!"

He had only a grunt in answer, and instead had wrapped his arms around her and made the kiss and the intention ever deeper.

"I used to fear thunderstorms as a boy," Georg said quietly. The storm had lessened some, and the rain was falling only in a light drizzle now, but the thunder could be heard at a distance. "I may have wet the bed a few times, too."

"You, afraid of water?" Maria asked, burrowing deeper against her husband's warm body.

"Deathly. My greatest fear was, and is, drowning."

At this, his wife actually sat up and looked at him in disbelief. "You're joking."

Tugging at her waist so she would lay back down, Georg shook his head. "I wish I was."

"It just seems so… strange," Maria trailed, allowing herself to be drawn to the man beside her once more. "A decorated naval captain, engineer of submarines, afraid of water."

"It's not deep water that scares me," he answered. "A death below the sea's surface would be quick, crushing, suffocating. It's the shallow waters, the places people assume are safe, that fill me with cold dread. Why, I've even heard stories of babies drowning in a bit of bath water while their mothers turned around to fetch the soap or towels."

Maria thought back over the years, to all the times they had taken their children to a lake or the seaside, and even the day when she and the children had toppled over in the rowboat on the grounds of the von Trapp villa. He _had_ been, in Maria's opinion, rather too incensed about the whole incident, but at the time she had merely attributed his behaviour to his dislike of her and her ways. Any outings with the youngest to water had Georg hovering like a mother hen, unwilling to be more than an arm's length away from any one child who played at the water's edge. Flashes of him snatching Rosemarie and Johannes as they fell to their bottoms while seafoam met their young skin and rolled over came to mind; she had either been preoccupied herself with some child or incident, or had otherwise thought the event to be sweet, endearing, and attentive. There had been times, even here, where Maria herself had waded a bit too far into the water and the tide or the waves were more than she had expected, and before she could lose her balance and slip under the water, he would be there, pulling her back to the strand, to safety, she realized, even as he would kiss and tickle and twirl her in his arms.

"All these years, and never a word," Maria said, looking at her husband with something that could only be called wounded melancholy.

"So many times, we had the children nearby," Georg said. "I did not want to give to them something they did not possess; it is a good thing not to fear water, but to have comfort and caution of it. Besides, there is more to the danger of a shallow tumble or swim. It's so simple to cause illness, pneumonia or a fever or something worse."

Brow furrowing, Maria thought back to how, indeed, having ingested a bit too much lake water, Gretl had developed a rather nasty hacking cough in the days following their row on the terrace, and her father had absolutely insisted that she be taken to hospital, a house visit from the family physician altogether surpassed. He had demanded observation, medication, a stay overnight, refusing to be reasoned with. It was only through his reputation that the doctors acquiesced; Gretl had been most displeased about this, but the opportunity to properly hydrate her and control the hacking cough was not entirely amiss.

Maria had her arms wrapped around him now, was humming something low in the back of her throat while resting her head down against his own. "It came to nothing," she gently reminded, squeezing him gently. He had worked himself into a dither upon this remembrance, and it simply wouldn't do. "Not after the lovely morning we've been having ourselves," Maria said firmly, though her voice did waver as she closed her mouth.

But that was the thing of it: her husband was deathly afraid of illness. Not that inflicted upon himself, but rather upon his children, his wife, the ones he loved. This, Maria had known almost as long as they had been acquainted, for after the run-in with the Captain on her first night at the von Trapp villa, Maria had huffed to the maids about his audacity to simply stride into the bedroom of his governess, who could be altogether indecent, and one had commented in a thick accent not unfamiliar to Maria's ears, "The Captain, he hates thunderstorms. The missus, she died during one, you see. He gets restless, and refuses t'not know the whereabouts of his children. Hates when they're sick, too. He becomes absolutely unbearable."

Maria had needed to bite her tongue to keep from remarking that her employer already _was_ unbearable, and insufferable to boot, but a quick glance toward the door as Frau Schmidt made her entry to the kitchen where the help was huddled doing small chores and sipping morning tea had made it easy enough to hold her silence. Maria did not precisely dislike the housekeeper, but there was some irritating air of superiority about her that Maria could not shake, and felt was justified when she was shooed out of the kitchens with an admonishment to summon her morning tea on a tray brought up by the servants.

"But I—" Maria had protested, snatching at her teacup and toast as she was ushered out the door by the head housekeeper.

"Hurry along upstairs, now, dear," Frau Schmidt had said with a shake of her head. "It's no use consorting down here, you're the governess, not downstairs staff, for heaven's sake!"

She had sloshed some tea down her front, and with a sigh, set to climbing the many stairs back to the second floor, where she changed her dress—one Liesl had found and smuggled to her after being sent to bed on a thunderous note—and resumed donning the ugly, scratchy gray dress that the Captain had all but turned his nose up at in disgust.

Though Maria had remained hard-hearted even after hearing these intriguing things about her employer, and had continued on in her matched obvious dislike for him as he did her, quiet observations through the following months had proven these observations about Georg von Trapp to be nothing but unvarnished truth, and it was one evening after staging the puppet show, just days before Baroness Schröder's "grand and glorious party," that Maria had climbed the stairs with a heated water bottle and aspirin for an under-the-weather Marta, who had knocked her head earlier in the day roughhousing with her brothers and wasn't feeling up to eating a meal. When she turned down the hall leading to the children's bedrooms, she came to Marta and Gretl's nursery to see a dim light flooding through the door, which was ajar, and found as she peered in that the Captain was seated at the edge of Marta's bed, spoon-feeding her plain porridge from a small bowl that he held in one hand, obviously not bothered by its heat.

Watching this, Maria had felt something shift in her, and she knew now for certain that this man was a good man, a moral man, with love in his heart, and her own had softened toward him.

"You simply must get better fast, Mäuschen," he had murmured to his daughter, who was groggily peering at him while taking the spoonfuls of porridge. When she sneezed and her father helped her to sit up, she caught sight of Maria, who had pushed the door ajar, and reached out for her.

"Fräulein Maria," Marta said, voice thin. "My tummy feels better, but my head aches!"

Maria expected that the Captain would vacate in a fluster, but instead he stayed seated on the bed, reaching out a hand to feel his daughter's forehead. He looked behind at his governess after feeling his daughter's temperature and said, "I wanted to give her something to stomach that aspirin on. She sometimes spits it back up otherwise."

"I see," Maria nodded, setting down the aspirin next to a full glass of water on Marta's nightstand. She stepped around to the other side of her charge's bed and drew back the covers, tucking the water bottle at her feet to keep her stockinged feet warm. When this was finished, Maria motioned to the Captain to give the little girl the aspirin, and he held it out for her to take, glass of water at the ready, which the child took dutifully, then laid back and closed her eyes.

"Her feet get cold, even with socks," Maria explained, looking over at the Captain. "Then she can't sleep, or gets very restless."

"It's better if she stays awake a little while longer," the Captain said, a bit roughly. He added at Maria's wide-eyed expression of irritation, "To be sure there was no concussion, but she's so tired."

Peering at him, Maria could no longer see the stiff naval captain with whom she disagreed on nearly everything. Instead, in his place, was a weary father. With a sigh, she stepped forward and shook the child's shoulder. "Marta," Maria said gently, "can you tell me your favourite things?"

With some coaxing, Marta opened her eyes and smiled a small smile. "Bunny rabbits," she answered. "Primroses. Ice cream, but not when it runs down my arm. Dogs. Dandelions. Party dresses, Fräulein Maria's guitar, cake, schnitzel, bike rides, new dolls…"

"I think she'll be alright," Maria said a half hour later, watching as the Captain shut Marta's bedroom behind them. "I'll stay up with her, to be sure."

"I appreciate that," the Captain said, seemingly at a loss to say much else. With useless hands, he said awkwardly, "I expect the Baroness and Max are wondering where I've gone. Nodding stiffly, though not so severely as he would have once before, he bade the governess good night.

He hadn't waited for her response, and instead turned and hurried for the stairs. Pensive, Maria watched his retreating figure and murmured, "Good night, Captain von Trapp."

If she had an overinflated sense of herself, Maria might have at that time attributed his presence to her own triumphs, but knowing what she knew of Georg von Trapp's fear of illness, she had simply gone to change into her nightclothes, puzzled, but praying fervently that it was more than it seemed, everything it looked like, another glimmer of change. He had said yes, after all, when she had presented him the guitar and implored him to play Edelweiss for his children and company.

She wondered to herself, what moved a man such as him to do what she had found upon arrival, him spoon-feeding his daughter, as she tucked Gretl into bed and turned her to the wall so the light from Marta's bedside wouldn't keep her awake. As she sat down to watch Marta sleep in a chair pulled up to the bed, dragged from the hallway, she heard Marta rasp sleepily, "Father?" and felt her heart crack as she leaned forward to stroke the little girl's forehead, brushing away her fringe and laying a kiss on her warm, soft skin.

"No, Marta, it's only me," Maria said softly.

"Sing us a song," the girl said softly. "Like Father sang for us."

And so, with less reluctance than she would have expected of herself, Maria recalled the chords the Captain had played on her guitar, almost able to feel the strings beneath her fingers, and finding her note, she sang "Edelweiss" for the littlest girls, heart filling with the same warm feeling of content and belonging that had filled her as the Captain sang to his children and looked up at her, crooning, searching for approval, and she was satisfied.

"I think that was when I really knew I loved you," Maria said softly, having recounted her memories for Georg. "Of course, I didn't know what name to attach to it, and even if I had known, I wouldn't have dared to, but… that simple little thing. You looking up at me, and the days that followed. I was smitten."

"I lay awake that night tossing and turning," Georg said. "Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I felt like an ass for letting my governess assume the role of benevolent caretaker for my own sick daughter. I got out of bed and went to relieve you, so you could go to bed."

Maria shook her head. "I don't remember that. Not at all. Granted, it was a long time ago."

Georg shook his head. "When I didn't find them in their beds, I panicked and went to your room, where I found all three of you asleep, a light on and the door ajar, you with one girl tucked under each arm, inexplicably entwined together. I couldn't wake you."

Realization dawned on Maria's face. "They wouldn't sleep," she said. "It was my compromise. I carried them back later that night, when one of them kicking me with those cold feet woke me."

"I see," Georg said. "At any rate, it might have been the nail in the coffin that sealed my fate to yours, seeing you three like that. Agathe… well, I had found her in such a fashion so many times before, just like that. With Liesl and Friedrich, and later adding Louisa. It felt… it felt like home."

"That is a most fascinating choice of words," Maria said quietly. "I don't profess great fears for much of anything, save an absence of faith, but feeling I've belonged anywhere has never been my strongest point."

"Two strings intertwined," her husband muttered. "Knotted, as not to break."

"Hmm?" Maria intoned.

"I can't say I'm one for fate," Georg rumbled, "but I think we were always moving toward one another. I believe that."

"It is the only thing I can think," Maria said quietly. She fell silent for a moment, then hesitated, taking a breath. "I almost bolted, right before the nuns came to help me finish dressing for the wedding. I felt such an imposter. An imposter in the church, and imposter in my gown, an imposter in the marriage."

Having had the years to learn his wife's tendencies, and having suffered largely for it at the culmination of their declaration of love, this was not precisely shocking news. Perhaps mellowed by the somber discussion, the early morning lovemaking, the simply existing in a bubble together with her, Georg felt himself equipped for truth, and prodded, "What changed your mind?"

"I wish I could say it was something nobly romantic of me, like looking up at you when I came to the gates," Maria sighed, "but it was Liesl, and the little ones, standing there waiting for me, eyes shining and so excited. They were the ones that helped me know what it was like to belong when I felt nothing else, when nothing else seemed to fit me. All of them did it, together, but those three? They began it, they cultivated it, they pursued me with a fervency that is only outstripped by you now, as my husband and best friend."

"I rather prefer the truth," Georg mused. "It shows your character for what it is."

"How do you mean?" Maria asked.

"You loved me, you knew that, I knew that, and we trusted it. But before all else, no strings attached, you loved my children and they loved you. There was nothing for you to feel that you were imposing on, not even their mother. They wouldn't allow it, in loving you for you."

"I see," Maria nodded. "More's the pity, then, that acclimating myself to life here was such a trial."

Indeed, Maria was newly pregnant with Rosemary, unsettled, uncomfortable with her use of English despite her startling fluency, and not inclined in any way to try to ingratiate herself to the people of Stowe, Vermont, already feeling rather like a fish in a fishbowl, and quite ill to boot. "I will not be a spectacle," she had insisted to Georg, up to her elbows in suds and scrubbing of the bed linens. "I've nothing suitable for a church outing, unless you mean for me to go in one of my dirndls!"

And even that had been inadvisable, due to the staring at the traditional Austrian costume, and to Maria's rapidly-growing chest and waistline.

It had gone on for over a year by the time Maria, again pregnant, sick as a dog, and landed in the hospital for yet another round of antibiotic treatments to aid her floundering kidneys, found herself being properly acquainted with some of the women in the town who had heard there was a need for food and help at the von Trapp chalet. They had gone first to the chalet with casseroles for the children, and made a no-nonsense schedule to help divide the burden that would fall to Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Brigitta, and Georg particularly. Then, they had visited Maria and her husband in twos, bringing well-wishes and flowers, and somehow, on the heels of that first trial of trials, a ring of trust and friendship had been born.

"I realized later that I had done it to myself," Maria said ruefully, "and perhaps, in a way, I always have, but when I reflected on this with them, they all, the dears, immediately jumped to say they all could have done much better themselves at making an effort. The fact alone that I could speak English well seemed to lift a huge weight from their shoulders."

"It fits your pattern, though," Georg said, pushing himself up and motioning for Maria to lay back against him, so he could cradle her and wrap his arms around her, "your wall goes up first, and when you experience things later that suggest you could lower the defense, you do so."

"And look where it landed me," she chuckled.

Shifting around a bit, rustling the bed sheets, Georg shrugged. "C'est la vie!"

"I wouldn't trade it for anything," Maria said. "Not a thing. What one learns, how one grows… and I seem to have mostly resolved that problem of belonging, with time."

"If nothing else, we belong to each other," Georg reminded. "And to God."

"And what a blessed assurance it is!" Maria exclaimed. "A total security, beyond all else. That, I could not have known at first, standing at the far end of the altar. I know it now."

"You knew it then," Georg reminded. "Didn't you say as much to Liesl?"

"I did," Maria agreed, "and though I stand by it, there was something missing. I was basking in the honeymoon glow, and had put a veil over the reality of the challenges of life and what it can bring."

"No, I don't think so," Georg responded. "I remember what you said to me after I read that telegram she brought me. I don't think I'll ever forget it. 'I knew something like this would happen.'"

"Don't give me credit for that," Maria murmured. "It was simply the way of war. It _is_ the way of war. And I had learned very intimately just how far your influence reaches when you draw yourself toward something that calls to you."

She was thinking at this moment of one evening long ago, wherein she and Georg had been invited to visit with a Hungarian naval engineer who was residing in France, whom her husband was familiar with through word-of-mouth. The three had dined alone together, and after a tour of the grounds to settle their meal, the man had led them both to his study and unfurled a set of design plans and laid them out before Georg. Maria had peered at everything alongside the men and had been impressed by what she saw, but what she remembered most clearly was not the plans laid before them, but rather the way her husband had stretched out a hand and brushed the top blueprints lightly, with awe and reverence, and when she turned her head to look upon his face, the expression she found there could only be described as pure longing.

He had tried to speak, twice, but no words emerged.

Seeing this, Maria had looked up at the Hungarian engineer, who was surveying her husband with interest, clearly expecting comment and perplexed at the lack thereof, and said, "I'm afraid I know very little about how one goes about building a submarine… what are we looking at?"

With this to ground him, her husband spoke immediately. "It's one of my submarines," he said, looking at her. "My first during the Great War, which started the campaign that earned me my honors. It was French, but we took it in battle and modernized it and I achieved massive success with it. They have it again, now," he trailed, looking up now at the naval engineer. "How have you come by this?"

"We're in France, aren't we?" the man replied with bemusement. "But to be direct, I engineered these designs." He reached out across the table on which everything was spread and placed a finger in the lower right-hand corner. Faded but legible, there was scribbled the man's surname alongside a date and stamp of certification.

"I don't suppose the French navy would appreciate me taking a stroll by their shipyard," Georg said in a droll display of self-mockery.

"In any case, it would do you no good, as they scrapped her in 1929."

This piece of news caused her husband to unleash a sharp bark which caused Maria to jump, but all her husband said was, "Fools, all of them, with what could soon come. That lunatic is no friend to this country."

It was the first time he had spoken of any possible success of Nazi Germany annexing Austria, and it was that moment when Maria knew her husband would certainly be called to serve. He was too good to pass over, a crown jewel, an engineer and captain both. Respected, renowned, decorated… even Maria, who had been quite small, knew the details of his exploits from childhood, such was his reputation among Austria. He was a starring role in a chapter of their country's long and fraught history. To do otherwise would be, frankly, quite the waste of the resources Herr Hitler had at his disposal.

It was through this exchange that it finally congealed, all the moving parts that composed the thing that was the burden placed upon this man's shoulders, and Maria's heart ached for him. She reached out wordlessly as he stood before the plans, hands spread wide and posture stiff as he bent over them, shaking his head at the absurdity of the world they lived in, and she slipped her hand through his arm and stood fast beside him.

This startled him, and he jerked his head slightly as he realized it was Maria, and slowly, his face softened and he relaxed, and finally, reached around with his free hand and brought it to the back of her head, pressing a kiss to her forehead. The display, in front of another, was so rare, unexpected, but Maria accepted with the smallest of smiles and breathed ever so slowly, allowing her stiffened shoulders to relax, glad for a moment to allow him to think he was comforting her, when they were truly comforting each other.

Their company, discretely gone to gaze out a window, said after some time, "I intend to be ready, but of course the question follows: on whose side shall I stand? I surely do not know."

But there was no room in this world to sit on a fence, to dither, to lead to wrack and ruin through ambivalence alone, for what could come of indifference was far higher a price than any principled fight had ever cost one side for the other.

"Cowardice is a dirty word like no other when you live the life of a military man," Georg said quietly, pondering his own thoughts alongside Maria's silent ruminations. "I could say the longest stream of filth out loud and have another round poured out by my commanding officer as he roared with laughter, but to be a coward… that was your end and it is the only thing I fear on this earth that is pure abstraction."

"Did you not once say," Maria said, slipping her arms into a dressing gown as she sat up in bed, preferring layers to shutting her ever-open window, "that family and song and music was the essence of Austria?"

"I might have agreed to a similar statement," Georg acquiesced, "though I doubt I myself said such a thing."

"Oh, but you have," his wife said firmly. "Not in words, but in deed." Beckoning, she climbed out of bed and led him by the hand, helping him shrug into his own dressing gown as they went, and she brought him to stand on the front stoop of their bungalow, where all that they could see was the storm, dark and present, but moving away from them.

Observing the scene before them, Georg finally looked down at his wife, whose gaze was fixed on him, instead of at the skyline as he expected.

"There is no room for you to have been a coward, because no Austria existed anymore for you to run from. I think you know this in your head, but do not quite believe it in your heart, otherwise you would have said nothing of this."

Letting out a long breath, Maria paused only to indicate that she wanted to sit down, and then continued, "Faced with the impossible, you chose to bring your family as far away from harm as possible. If you're looking for cowardice to be the word to define the closing of that chapter of your life, I'm afraid that in the book _I_ possess, I find only the words 'loyal' and 'brave.' Having struggled rather a lot myself, I can say with some authority that what you did by bringing us here was _not_ easy, and you picked up a great deal where I was sorely lacking. It is, quite possibly, the most Austrian thing you could have done—to be a husband to me and father to our children, and you have been only ever a man of highest integrity and honor in so being."

"You are my greatest champion, Maria," Georg said quietly. "One I surely do not deserve."

Lightning streaked and thunder rolled far in the distance, and for a while, neither spoke a word, but Georg had the sense that it was not a pensive silence for Maria, but rather one of calculated precision, to which she finally gave in:

"I speak not of perfection, rather of how you rise above adversity to do what you are called to do. I shudder to think what would have become of me, the children, of you, if you were a different man."

By these words, Georg felt himself overwhelmed to the point of speechlessness, but a great warmth flooded through him as he heard what things his wife was saying, and felt a sense of calm and peace settle in him that he had not known was missing, even in having mentioned this great fear above all else to begin with. At the time it had just seemed to fit in to their mundane talk of fears.

Coming here to Chincoteague had not been meant as a venture of discovery, but oh, what had been learned in the span of these days on the island was beyond his wildest imagination.

"I never imagined how blessed I would be to be with a man who loves me madly but challenges me ever more to be everything I can be," Maria said quietly. "I think I shirked the idea of family and children for myself because I had never known what value was hidden within it all. I had only ever known sorrow and anger."

Georg looked over at his wife and he squeezed her hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss her knuckles. "The best thing about a storm," he said, "is how clear and new the world is afterward. The sun most surely shines again."

"Indeed," Maria echoed.


	5. Night and Dreams

The gentle sound of mellow guitar strings being plucked and duly harmonized with in a warm, mellow tone danced and wove its way through the quiet bungalow, at last free of the gripping, dense heat and dampness that had prevailed in the previous days.

Rinsing his hands under scalding hot water, Georg shook the excess from his hands and reached to dry the last of the dinner dishes. Looking out the kitchen window, a breeze gently blowing in, rustling the tree that stood just beyond, the great sun was orange and low in the sky, sinking into a resplendent medley of pinks, yellows, purples, blues, summoning the night.

A snap interrupted this calm, the warmth of the duet of guitar strings and quiet crooning ended in the same instant.

Hurriedly stacking the dishes in the cupboard directly to his left, Georg tossed the dish towel over the sink and went to investigate the unwarranted disruption of this most peaceful evening. Stepping through the kitchen and sitting room in great strides, he passed through the screen door to see where his wife was sitting at the bottom of the steps, feet bare, donning a simple sundress, with her guitar laid across her lap as she removed a snapped guitar string from the fret board.

"Maria?" he asked, stepping forward.

Turning her gaze to look over her shoulder, Maria looked up at her husband, an expression of muted irritation on her face. "I've snapped it," she sighed. "Too much fiddling. It's this humidity. It's finally gone, and I've snapped it."

"Where is the case?" Georg asked. "I'll fetch you a new one."

"In the car," Maria said. "In the boot, I think."

The guitar had spent most of their stay on the island either in the trunk of the car or laid against the wall next to the fireplace in the sitting room, its owner too preoccupied with other undertakings or too annoyed at the need to tune it every time she touched it to be played very often, and it was only upon Georg's insistence that she go enjoy the evening while he did the washing up that the instrument was even in hand at all.

"It's a rare treat," he had said, "to have such silence around us and simply listen to you play the way you would play before, in a world before ten requests and demands at once."

Maria had laughed at this, stood to her feet, kissed him rather generously, and swept away without a word at this justification, needing no other encouragement. This time here, after all, had been meant for them alone.

Georg had gathered the dishes, enjoying the comfort of the sounds of his wife's barefooted feet crossing the creaking floorboards, hearing her cheerfully greet her guitar like an old friend as it came to be in her grasp, the clatter of the screen door as she stepped outside, and the immediate tuning that ensued mere seconds later, that led to her quiet song, which had led to the snapped string.

"Here you are," Georg said a few minutes later, climbing the stairs again and resting the case on the step above Maria for her to rummage within.

"You are a dear," she said, holding the instrument out for him to take. "I think I've only got two left, though, and I don't know that they're the ones I need. And in any case, it was stupid to leave it out so long with the weather the way it has been."

"Do you think the strings have rusted some?" Georg asked, peering at the fret and measuring where the string had snapped.

"Yes, which is my fault entirely," Maria said, "though if you look closely at the fret, it appears there are some burrs. It's been a while since I've checked the whole thing over properly."

She was rummaging through the case, and managed to produce a bit of sandpaper, which she held out for Georg to take. He did so, sitting down on the porch swing with the guitar. He continued the process of removing the strings from the fretboard, meanwhile his wife became something of her own dervish in the process. He looked up only at the flooding of light some minutes later to see her smirking and holding out his reading glasses.

"It's getting a bit dark, and if you're to smooth out the frets, then I'd like it done properly," she teased with a glint in her eye.

"As if I would ever do less than a perfect job," Georg snorted, but he took the proffered spectacles and found that the light made his job rather easier.

"And here is the string," Maria said, sitting down beside him. "A lucky thing, as I haven't any more."

"We'll stop by the music shop on our way home tomorrow," Georg said, peering carefully at his wife's trusty guitar and beginning to sand down the frets with utmost care. "You're right," he said, pointing with a pinky finger at the fret where, by his best approximation, the string had snapped.

Maria craned to peer at the fret and nodded in agreement. "Yes, as I thought."

When the guitar was ready to be restrung, Georg handed the instrument over to Maria, who he knew was all too particular about the tone, tune, and feel of her instrument, and her skilled hands soon had all strings reattached and tightened to her best approximation, ready to once again be tuned.

"I prefer a piano for this, myself," Georg murmured, but Maria simply shook her head, silencing him in her concentration, and sang a note, plucking her strings and adjusting them with practiced ease.

"Pianos fluctuate just as well as a guitar," she said when she was pleased with the sound. "But one's voice, with a good ear and strong training, will never fail to meet the standard."

"In other words, perfect pitch," he teased.

"If you're calling me a snob, then you're right," Maria said, just the slightest bit waspish. "There aren't many things about myself that I'm proud of, but I am proud of that."

"I can only barely claim relative pitch myself, so your lowly husband simply must have that blasted piano, my sweet."

"Don't swear," Maria said mildly, looking over at Georg, "and you can have the stupid thing, perhaps with just dessert."

"And by that, you mean… what?"

But is wife simply smiled a small smile, rose to her feet, and resumed her seat at the foot of the steps, cradled around her instrument, and began to play a warm, daring, mysteriously dark and deliciously sensual piece.

It was not precisely unusual a choice, but it was unexpected; it was he, Georg, who would typically play a set such as this, though nothing original, certainly, and always with sheet music.

"You are unnerving when you choose a minor key," Georg said. "The first time I heard you play something like that—I have seen you cry, but never like that. It was as if the world had ended."

"I remember," Maria said quietly.

They hadn't brought either guitar with them to Paris, figuring they would have no need of them, and also wanting to stave off unnecessary bickering amongst the children. They had only Maria's guitar upon escape to Switzerland, with Georg's having been left behind in Salzburg with Max on the stage of the festival halls, and in a tense moment, they had rowed furiously over selling it, or simply ditching it altogether. It would only be unnecessary trouble that they didn't need, Georg had reasoned. They could buy another one day. But Maria had simply refused. Unlike any other disagreement before, she had dug in her heels, and she had absolutely refused to budge.

Why, she would not say. She would offer no clue, no reason, no compromise. Incensed, fuming, furious that of all things to refuse to cast away, it was a heavy, clunky instrument, Georg had disappeared in the car they had taken from Nonnberg Abbey, driving it to the center of Zurich to have repairs done on it that would make it usable as far as they would need before leaving the European continent.

He had returned late that night. The children, already abed, were nowhere to be seen or heard, and nor, Georg had thought, was his wife. The little farmhouse they were crammed into was dark, not even a light flickering in the kitchen window for him. But, he discovered, after closing the vehicle in the shed and walking toward the back door, hands jammed in his pocket, there was a sound of intense melancholy drifting wistfully from somewhere beyond the garden.

With the light of the moon to guide him, Georg veered off toward the sound, recognizing its melody as he came closer and listened harder. It was the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," adapted for the strings of a guitar ever so skillfully, played over and over and over again.

He heard her sorrow so clearly in those notes, the minor key wrenching something deep within him. Weeks now, they had been here, on the outskirts of Zurich, scheming and planning and plotting, and he had not stopped once to wonder if Maria and her staunch no-nonsense support and help was masking something deeper. He had been too focused on distracting himself, on escorting the family to safety, too focused on diverting himself from his crushing, overwhelming sense of failure.

And now, he realized, stepping closer to the woman who played this sad piece, seeing that there was no song on her lips, no expression on her face, only tears flowing freely and many, that he had failed in the only way that truly mattered at this moment.

She had seen him, he knew, because as he knelt down in front of her, she did not ignore him, rather held her gaze with his, and when he thought that she, ruthless as she could be, would simply disregard him and carry on with the second movement, or worse still, move straight into the tumultuous third movement, spare him nothing, she stopped. She did not let the notes fade, but closed her fist around the fretboard, placed her fingers against the vibrating strings, and brought it all to a sharp, sudden stop.

"I was never allowed to sing a thing in the minor key," she rasped, clutching the instrument so tightly that Georg could see the strained tendons, the white skin of her hands, her voice thin and raspy. "It destroys me inside. I could damage my voice. So, they gave me this guitar."

"They…?"

"Didn't you ever look at it, wonder at its newness, notice the lack of scuffs or scratches? We're not to have worldly things in the abbey, I have told you as much," Maria said. "Because you didn't like my dress, remember?"

"Maria…"

But she abandoned this line, and cut over him instead:

"I know it in my head, Georg, that we don't know each other terribly well. We haven't known each other six months. It didn't seem to matter. I don't think it does, really. We're married. We share a bed and a life. We shared a dream and now a nightmare. I had resolved to be everything you've needed from me, but this one thing, this one thing you ask of me, and have no comprehension of… I feel it in my heart now, just how little I know you nor you me. And I don't know what to do, because to this point, I've trusted what I know because it was in tune with my heart, even when something seemed to pull me somewhere else."

"You could have said something," Georg said, resting his hands on her knees.

"You weren't listening," Maria countered sadly. "You didn't want to listen. You wanted to be in control. It was as if that respect you gave me had vanished, and I had turned back into the errant little governess that so rankled you for months. It made me wonder if respect would only be maintained as long as I behaved in a manner that suited you. And in that case, I feel like a doll in a dollhouse and very much alone."

She wasn't angry, Georg recognized, not anymore. She was heartbroken, and this filled him with cold, icy dread. Infuriated Maria fought back, threw what he dished out back in his face. Meek Maria simply did as she was bid. But heartbroken Maria? There was nothing in this Maria to kindle the fiery embers of rage. Heartbroken Maria's sadness seeped into everything around her, and faced with that prospect, she ran. She ran, not realizing that though she carried this sorrow with her, she did not possess the power to remove it from those who loved her. It remained, a reminder, inescapable but for the fading of memories and the passage of time.

"So many times, you remarked how strange it was that I ever wanted to be a nun. I deflected it, I laughed, I let the question linger and fade to oblivion. Perhaps I should not have, for it gave a rather dishonest portrait of me in a time between us that was so much a fairytale."

"I'm afraid I don't quite see what you mean," her husband said, hoping that his tone was not unintentionally inflammatory, or worse, muting.

She looked down to her feet. "I've only ever told one person this, and in confidence at that. But I did not join the abbey out of some driven desire to seek and serve God. Certainly, I was curious, and I knew of the fact that those of the cloistered life often serve their community, but what charmed me was nothing so pious or righteous. What drew me in was their songs. I wanted to sing with them, to lift my voice in worship, and when I entered, the rather long process caused my focus to wander, and in an attempt to help me with that, it was discovered that though I have a gifted voice, I cannot sing in minor keys. It is too emotional, and I haven't the training to divert damage, and as they often liked to remind me, I am young, younger than most who cross the threshold.

"By this time, I had already invested so much, learned so much, ingratiated myself upon many… that even as what I had wanted from that life was wrenched away, possibly for decades, possibly forever, I was determined to stay. I had nothing, no one; even though I was the misfit, the sisters had become my family… I miss them very much."

"You say so often how much it seemed that they didn't want you there. From that angle, from where you've now ended up, it seemed to me just to be a stop along the way, and the fact that it bothered you, merely a detail."

"That is where I have failed, then," Maria sighed. "Miserably. I have done their help and guidance no justice whatsoever if that is how you have understood this. I am no angel, and though a virgin and rather innocent to love upon marriage, not so innocent to worldly desires and simply focused in a different direction and trajectory when you met me than most would be. I think you know this." Now, she was looking at him pointedly, sharply, despite the heat rising in her face.

Just the fervor of their first kiss alone, Georg realized, exemplified this in spades. Remembering it, how she melded herself so readily into him, threw herself into the coupling with eager passion, a bit clumsy but not altogether lacking experience—or perhaps the better word was _familiarity_ —was enough to stir desire in him, make something hungry for her in his chest roar with approval. Never mind their torturous engagement, proliferous honeymoon—almost sinful in its reckless abandon—he might as well have come to understand his wife anew in this very moment. It was such a simple reorientation, but a powerful one.

"You have known loss," Maria said glumly, oblivious to anything the man knelt before her might be thinking. "Horrible, terrible loss. I would not wish it on anyone. But put yourself back there for a moment, and imagine having nowhere to turn, no one to run to. Needing it desperately, at just seventeen."

The cold of the ground was painful to his knees, creeping up his limbs, and with this scenario on her lips, that cold dread intensified in Georg's breast and mercilessly reached up its sharp, unforgiving fingers, and grasped his heart.

Swallowing, he closed his eyes and breathed for a moment. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, rapid and dizzying, and his eyes were opened in that moment to just how very young Maria was. He knew in his head that she was twenty-three years of age, and only just turned, and a part of him had struggled with her youth mightily against the reality of his age in comparison, but at the end of it all, the world had aged her, made her older and wiser and harder than her years, and he had forgotten.

Or perhaps he had never really known. Seventeen, for him, had been over two decades prior. For Maria it had only been a handful of years. Liesl was almost seventeen now, had been motherless _and_ fatherless when she needed it most… and while his wife and his daughter were two _very_ different sort of people, he was now uncomfortably and keenly aware of what he had conveniently, ignorantly overlooked.

"I know you think it hopelessly childish, stupidly juvenile, but I simply am not equipped to give up this guitar," Maria said, the heavy weight of finality concluding her stance, and, he suspected, her willingness to discuss the issue.

His response would set off either a much better, nuanced trajectory for them, or a terribly, dangerously, damagingly turbulent one. She would never allow him to become too comfortable, too complacent with himself, and she had a way of addressing things in an honest way that did not garner pity or suffer foolishness, and he hoped that this would be a thing that would help them to grow together over the years. He did not have the words, however, to express this in a way that felt adequate, and he had never really considered himself a man of many words. Instead, he reached out to touch her face, which was downturned, and brushing aside his surprise at the warmth he felt despite the cold of the night, he said, "Promise me something?"

"Yes?" Maria whispered expectantly, but with a rising tone that suggested she might not acquiesce.

"Promise that you'll play songs in the minor key on this guitar, and promise me that we'll never stop learning about each other, no matter where we go or what we must face."

Maria's face as she looked upon him was rather unreadable, and through all this time she had not loosed her grip on the guitar. It was clear, in that moment, that she would not accept a halfway measure, and with startling clarity, Georg realized what was still owed her. Something that had nothing to do with the guitar at all. Something that was the true center of her unease and unrest.

"I love everything you are, Maria, and I have disregarded those things in you that have made you so strong. I should not have pushed so hard without seeking the truth, and I am sorry for that. I am sorry too that I became so wrapped up in myself, what I and the children have lost, what is needed, what is still to come to pass, without considering what you have lost, and how you value that in contrast to how I do… and how you cope with that. I have placed so much upon your shoulders in the span of mere weeks, and though I think you are equal to it, it is hardly fair."

"I don't need a commanding officer," Maria said quietly. "I need my husband."

Bowing his head, Georg muttered, "I know. Forgive me?"

At last, her grip and her posture slackened. She set the guitar aside and reached for her husband's hands, grasping them in her own. "I forgive you. I already had done. But please, take me out of this cold, into your arms, and warm me. I have missed you so terribly."

"The children might…" Georg trailed.

But his wife had fixed him with an expression so baldly incredulous, that instead, he nodded, rising to his feet and offering a hand to her, which she took, linking her free arm with his and grasping her guitar with the other hand.

"It won't kill you—or them—to simply do what a husband must for his wife," Maria commented, "without waiting for the perfect conditions, first. Otherwise, I think I might go mad."

And indeed, the words had proved sage ones over the years, whether they were meant for intimacy or the other more mundane things of life.

"I regret that it took me so long to realize that you are so similar to me, in that you don't enjoy conversing about sad things, painful things, that have hurt you in your life," Georg mused as he watched Maria pick at the guitar strings, listening carefully to each note she plucked.

"Who does, though?" Maria asked.

It was such a simple response. An obvious one, Georg knew. But not necessarily a transparent one. "There are those who thrive on the pain, on the recounting of it. There are those who need to talk about it to help process it. Though I find now that I can listen if it will help, I don't find value in it. I prefer what I say to have agency, not to be simple blathering about emotions or things that cannot be changed."

"That's why music has always been my highest earthly comfort," Maria said quietly. "I know I have a penchant for words, but there are things that I simply cannot put into words. One of the hardest conversations I have ever had was with you, back in Switzerland, attempting to resolve our row about this guitar. I felt more vulnerable then than on our wedding night. Words felt trite, I knew there was a chance you would take them that way, that you might not listen, that you might not want to. For me, music has always been the thing that feelings sound like. It's so much more adequate, deep, and useful to my soul to put my thoughts and feelings to music."

Georg nodded. "As though the world makes sense, if only for a little while."

"You have done so many romantic, thoughtful, wonderful things for me in the years we have been together, Georg," Maria said, "but I think the most wonderful thing you did was to buy that record player and collection of classical records in the minor key—and only the minor key—and insist that it was for our bedroom and nowhere or nothing else, whether we were simply up late reading, working on correspondence, nursing children, comforting night terrors, balancing the books, or making love. I have loved that it was only ever for us, and my heart cracked in two when you presented me with Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'."

"Love is a strange, funny language," Georg said. "And I had remembered how well the experiment seemed to work when we tried it out in Paris. But mostly, I just wanted you to feel there was space to experience yourself without me crowding over it all, especially with my brooding piano-playing."

At this, Maria smiled a wicked smile, and said slyly, "The new baby grand is supposed to have been delivered this week. Gretl sent a telegram earlier saying it arrived in one piece and that the old upright has been carted off to its new home."

Looking down at his wife, Georg shook his head. "You are impossible. Utterly impossible. I think I need fortification."

"I need some of that cake," Maria called after him, laughter coloring her voice. "And if you look in the glove box, I picked up some sheet music in Salisbury yesterday that I want you to play me the moment we're alone, and I promise it's not Liszt and his _Liebesträume_."

"You are a minx of the highest order," Georg said, shaking his head, when he returned.

"Thank you," Maria murmured, taking the cup of coffee and slice of pound cake her husband handed her as she moved up the steps and came to join him. Adding saucily, she said, "It's Strauss, and it's _decidedly_ domestic, to a point, anyway. _You_ should be able to relate."

Georg groaned at this as he sat down, not particularly disposed to Strauss and his waltzes, but certain he had caught a wicked twinkle in Maria's eye and a rather purposeful sway to her hips and spring to her step as she joined him on the creaky swing.

The guitar, repaired and tuned and thoroughly broken in, rested against the window frame a safe distance from the porch swing while husband and wife indulged in this particular cultural love of theirs that had not faded over the years of living an unexpectedly American life. They swung gently together in silence, sipping the bitter, black liquid in alternation with bites of the dense, slightly sweet lemon treat.

Eventually, Maria laughed, chuckling to herself. "You know, Liesl asked me a while after her marriage, rather wide-eyed and abashedly, whether you and I were very prolific, because Marta and Gretl always had the most entertaining conventions for odd noises heard at night, and when the others came along and became old enough to continue the sagas, the trend did not abate. And, she added in rather a rush, that now she thinks she might have an inkling about such ruckus and was terribly worried how having little ones might change that."

Joining in his wife's amusement, Georg asked with a chuckle, "What did you advise, dear heart?"

"I advised that the hardest phase is when they are entirely dependent on you—and it very much is, I'm not sorry it's behind us now—but that shoving it all aside for convenience or propriety's sake is very much a silly notion, and to do so would be a detriment. She was a bit confused by that, so I reminded her how miserable they were if we were miserable with each other, and seemed a bit flustered, but determinedly bolstered, by what the latter suggested."

"Ah, it is easy to make that girl squirm," Georg grinned.

"She sheepishly mentioned afterward that Brigitta once said she had a theory that we resolve the vast majority of our rough patches—how did she phrase it—'between the sheets.' I suggested that Brigitta is very rarely wrong."

"Correct me if _I_ am wrong," her husband smiled, squeezing Maria's hand, "but I think you very much enjoy being a coyly mysterious mother to adult daughters."

"Well, not so mysterious as to be useless, I hope," Maria answered. "They are sometimes startlingly forthright. But then they remember what my frame of reference is and become a bit shy. It amuses me, and I like to toy with them just a bit. Perhaps it isn't fair, but it is rather fun. And I hope that with some level of transparency, it will be of help to them. Not every woman can be so lucky to have a worldly naval captain to come home to, you know!"

"I certainly hope for our children to have healthy marriages, in every respect, as I think you and I have mostly managed," Georg mused. "A good marriage is a terrible thing to waste."

"I like how you've come around to my way of thinking," Maria teased. "And don't always need to whisk me away to a grand hotel to make love on satin sheets and call room service for roses and chocolate and the evening paper. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the lavish treatment from time to time, because I enjoy how you enjoy your grand gestures, but when all is said and done, I like us just fine, with or without the trappings. Messy and imperfect and terribly in love, and the best brood of children anyone could ask for."

"That about sums it up," Georg agreed, stacking their plates, utensils, and cups along the windowsill. Grasping Maria's guitar, he handed it to her and said, "One last song, for a good rest tonight and for the road home tomorrow?"

Leaning over to kiss him, Maria lingered, tasting the sugar and citrus on his lips, the bitter coffee on his breath, and smiled before she drew away. "Of course, my love. But only if you sing for me."

"What'll it be, then?"

"I do love a good love song," Maria nudged, picking out a melody from a Broadway musical that had taken her breath away in awe. "How about it? For our children, for us?"

"At least there is art to carry us to far away lands when we cannot wander too far ourselves," Georg said, nodding to his wife as she chose her key and hummed a starting note.

"And yet, not so far at all. Two strings intertwined, as you would say, I think."

The night sunk low over the pair as Maria played with skillful hands the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein ballad, made famous by Gertrude Lawrence some years before, words brought to bear by the man who sat beside her. Eventually, her clear soprano joined his steady baritone, and the stars were twinkling overhead by the time the last note was struck and faded to a close, followed home by the pair's voices in tandem, Maria's head coming to rest on Georg's shoulder as he drew an arm around her and held her close.


	6. Author's Note

Ihr Lieben,

Wir sind leider zum Ende gekommen. Ich danke euch _herzlich_ für eure Aufmerksamkeit!

It has been a long road back to writing for this over-worked, over-tired, underpaid German instructor/Dutch enthusiast/PhD student, and this story has been the ever-surprising, effervescent, uplifting, refreshing result. As with every project that hits exactly the mark I need it to hit, it has grown close to my heart. It has been with me over a long summer teaching English, come with me to Germany and back again, and has now seen a hellish front end of a semester to a close, and I'm ever so grateful that it waited for me to return to it.

That's the thing about stories. They will wait to be told, if need be.

There's a marked dark tone to this tale that I did not expect to complement its lighter side as well as it has, but I promised myself when it started to form its shape more clearly that I would leave it alone, because my goal is honesty, and the path that has taken me from writing and brought me back to it again has been one of the less pretty things I've experienced in life and has taken serious work and patience to overcome.

My other goal was, and remains, to render an interpretation of these characters I love so dearly in a way that remains true to what makes them so attractive in the first place, but also makes them real and human. I feel I've accomplished this, and there's a wonderful sense of comfort and surety woven between the light and the dark that I'm really proud of. I've come back to a handful of themes that have been a thorn in my side, or have begged to be addressed in a different way, flipped on their heads, or angled in an alternate fashion, and in the end, I have done that, and I am satisfied.

As ever, I am hugely grateful for reviews left, and look forward to every opportunity to interact with those who read my work and find out what kind of life it takes on from a different perspective.

Bis zum nächsten Mal,

Herzlich,

Cass x


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